


Synthesis

by Anthropos_Metron



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Love, Romance, Squinoa - Freeform, soul mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 13:20:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17788151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anthropos_Metron/pseuds/Anthropos_Metron
Summary: A chance discovery by Rinoa leads to shared realisation of a truth.For both Valentine’s Day and the 20th anniversary. Post-game, one-shot.





	Synthesis

**Author's Note:**

> Standard disclaimers apply, these aren't my characters, I'm not making an IP claim, and this isn't being done for commercial purposes. I'm just playing around with the characters because I love FFVIII and writing.

For her, it was another one of 'those' days.

Though she had quickly settled into a routine in Garden easily enough after they had defeated Ultimecia, it had, she had become aware, slowly, ineluctably, fell into being just that: a routine, without variation or change. At first, she had rather enjoyed the predictability of it, given all that had happened in her life of late, which is why she had not noticed the stasis creeping up on her. But it had, and now she felt captured by it. What was her role to be? It was a question she had asked repeatedly, but still lacked an answer.

Would anyone care very much for her worries? Likely not, she supposed. They might still think of her as a spoiled _Princess_ at best; but at the back of her mind was the suspicion that, ultimately, people rather wanted her out of the way, compartmentalised and shut out in case she was trouble. You didn’t indulge sorceresses; you didn’t find more things for them to do; you held your vigilance, you kept a wary eye on them.

And so, she found herself frequently as she found herself now, idling away the days reading, or simply walking around with Angelo, until she could share a meal and an evening with Squall, or chat over a coffee with Selphie or Quistis, when the sun had already set, and it seemed one’s enthusiasm for such things after a day of listlessness was already draining away.

Now, though, the sun was noon-high, and intense, and it blazed through the window of her room, warming itself on her bare legs at the end of the bed. She lay on her stomach on the bed; her head perched on a pillow, as her hand steadied a book in front of her face.

It was a book about sorceresses. Though Odine had supplied her with some material, much of it had been highly abstract, dense, and technical, not exactly the sort of thing a layperson could understand. She rather suspected that had been Odine’s intent, to give her a little taste without revealing much. _Come to Esthar and let me study you, and then you shall know more_ was the implied offer, she suspected. She had consequently embarked on her own research into the subject, helped along by Edea, and made easier by Garden’s library.

This one, written by a Dollet academic, was a historical and social overview of sorceresses, reaching back to the time before industrialisation and technology. She read on.

 _These early sorceresses, or ‘witches’ as they were described at the time, usually lead an eremitic life, secluding themselves away from population centres, lest they arouse suspicion, punishment or exploitation. This itself may have aroused suspicion, however, and the evil ‘witch’, completely blind and relying on her channelling crystal for sight, was an almost ubiquitous stock character in contemporary epic romances and_ chanson de geste.

Wait, what? Did that have any basis in reality? Was losing your sight something inherent to being a sorceress? Was that what awaited her? The book didn’t seem to expand on the issue further.

She fidgeted on the bed as her heart sank. _I never asked for any of this._

She’d have to make a note of this, to ask Edea or Odine about the issue later. She reached for her notepad and pen, before remembering that she’d completely filled it out, and needed a new one. She’d make a note on her mobile device, she thought – but then realised she’d switched it off, and placed it in its cradle to charge.

_Goshdarn it._

She almost felt like crying, but regained her composure, and applied herself to the issue.

_Squall’s._

She’d go to Squall’s; she had a keycard for the door. The Commander would doubtless have something to write on, for work, and in any case – she wanted to feel the reassurance that came with him. Even without him there, she’d feel better.

She shuffled to the end of the bed, and looked down. Angelo was quite soundly asleep in her basket. They’d both had a long walk this morning, and evidently it had quite tired her out, as she was not only asleep, but snoring.

She grinned. There was almost a cartoon character quality to Angelo’s squeaky, high-pitched snores that she never failed to find adorable. It was a rallying for her mood that she very much needed.

She swung her legs off the bed, and quietly began gathering her things, before heading out. She thought she’d executed the whole sneaky routine perfectly, without waking Angelo, but, as she turned to face into the room as she shut the door, she noticed Angelo was looking up at her, her head steady on the floor of her basket, but staring at her clearly, her dark eyes accentuated by her fixed gaze.

“Be good for Mommy,” Rinoa said, quietly, as she slipped out and closed the door.

***

Though she’d been inside it now plenty of times, and Squall had happily gave her a spare keycard, entering his rooms without him there still felt, emotionally, like something of a trespass. She called his name as she entered, but predictably he was not there.

The new rooms he had finally moved into after Ultimecia’s defeat were compact, but much more functional than the standard single person SeeD rooms. They were of a type which nominally was for official guests of Garden. Without being spacious exactly, they offered little touches of luxury.

They were also quite notably messy. Squall tended to fold clothes over the back of chairs, dump items in the corner of the room, and throw random items onto the floor. The rooms weren’t dirty, but messy; cluttered. Well lived-in, she corrected herself.

Yes, that was it entirely.

At first, after she’d been given the spare key, she’d considered tidying, but partly she didn’t want to alienate Squall – she could hear the ‘where did Rinoa put it??’ as she just considered the thought – but she also didn’t really see it as her responsibility to mother Squall. If he wanted his rooms messy, they’d be messy. With any luck, there’d be plenty of years ahead to make him more domesticated.

And it also meant that, when her mood was low, or she was missing the hugs which could not come, she was always within reach of a shirt with Squall’s scent on it.

Like now, for instance.

As she picked up the dark green t-shirt, slung carelessly over a chair, and drew it close to her, she half-considered how silly she might look, and whether other people drew such comfort from clothing. Perhaps she was unusual. Yet the other half of her thoughts really, really, did not care one bit for such considerations. Squall gave her comfort, and anything that brought her the immediacy of him gave her comfort. And that was all there was to it.

After a time, she tossed the t-shirt over her shoulder, letting it hang like a fur, and sighed.

“C’mon Mister T-shirt. Time we got down to business.”

She knew Squall had a desk in his bedroom, so she supposed it best to start the search for writing materials there.

Like the shirt, there was a pleasing sort of mustiness to the bedroom, with very much a Squall imprint on it. She sat herself down at the desk’s accompanying chair and slowly began opening its drawers. She was conscious that she had not been invited to do so, but she didn’t suppose Squall would mind.

The drawers were if anything in even more of a state of chronic, long-term disorder than the rooms. There was a fiesta of junk crammed into them. She attempted to open one of the middle drawers, but it seemed to keep becoming stuck on one of its runners mid-way, and when she finally forced it, there was almost an explosion of leaflets, flyers, and loose papers; It was like a coiled spring, or as if they’d been breeding in there and were suddenly in a rush to colonise elsewhere. _What was all this?_

She picked one of them up. GARDEN FESTIVAL it announced proudly, before a long series of exhortations, commands, and pronouncements.

_Oh, Selphie…_

Perhaps at some point she could do a little bit of tidying.

She finally unearthed what she’d been looking for in the top drawer, some black-bound notepads. She idly flicked through them to see if any of them had been used.

Some of them were unused. But some of them were, she could see, not. There was writing in them.

She was, she could not deny it, curious. Part of her desperately wanted to see into Squall’s inner thoughts. And yet – the intrusion of it. What had Squall confided to his notebooks? She could not even hazard a guess.

She thought about how, on balance, she would feel about Squall looking at her notes. That was the only question that could offer her a true guide.

_I’d actually feel… relieved._

Did she trust Squall?

Well, that wasn’t even a question worth the asking.

She hesitated for a moment, before committing herself.

This was perhaps the one thing she had never dreamed of seeing.

There were pages and pages of what appeared to be attempts to construct sentence structures, with words and phrases carefully chosen against each other to find delicate balances. There was imagery which Squall had clearly not been content with, with ample amounts of crossings out, some clearly heavy with frustration. And then the flow resumed, with pages of attempts at using natural imagery. Birds, fishes, seasons. None of it was dated; she had no way of knowing how long it had sat on the page.

Was this.. was this _poetry?_

The possibility made her heart rise; that Squall had been expressing himself – if only furtively, if only to these pages.

She flicked forward, quickly, and finally, she found the confirmation, a complete poem, which Squall had not seen fit to cross out:

 _owls soar at night_  
_koi rise to the surface_  
_only with the sun_

She read it again, several times, but it did not trigger any recognition. She frowned at the pages. What was the meaning? Were they even metaphors? A reference to the Forest Owls? Or were they literal experiences of Squall’s? All the possibilities both spurred her to know more, but also commended the mystery further. She found it hard to imagine Squall crouched in a wood, at night, or sitting languidly by a pond, observing koi. And yet – she found both images pleasing, compelling. Like the very discovery of the poetry, there was a depth here, a confirmation of a heightened awareness in Squall, whatever the meaning.

She brought the pages close to her chest, and giggled, as her legs swung to and fro. “Squall, you’re a poet, and I didn’t know it!”

The juxtaposition was undeniably somewhat funny – that Squall had been retiring to his room at night after a day of trying to shut out the world, of ‘whatever’s, to try to pour himself out onto the page.

And yet it was, she had to admit, also very, very beautiful to her. She looked back down at the pages.

“Squall…”

She thought about how many nights he had only been able to confide in those pages, and suddenly became overcome with a wave of melancholy, a maudlin, almost drunken sensation. This wasn’t why she’d come here at all, not remotely.

She placed the notes down on the desk, brought the t-shirt off her shoulder, and flopped down onto Squall’s bed with it. She cradled it, as she bunched herself up, foetal-like on the bed.

_Is this how it’s always going to be Squall? Me never being able to really express my fears, about growing wings, losing my sight, losing control? And you never fully opening up, of me only able to reach you indirectly, at one remove, through cryptic poetry and the sensation of your shirt pressed against me? Is this how it’s always going to be?_

No, she thought, firmly. No, it wasn’t. But another part of her said: yes, it is.

A wetness formed around the corner of her eye, as she buried herself in the shirt and pillow. Too exhausted with thoughts, she let her mind drift, happy only in smell and touch.

***

At the edge of half-consciousness, she became aware of a noise, and movement. Her mind slowly focused, and her eyes adjusted to the light.

It was Squall.

She sensed he had been observing her, though in a fidgety way. Perhaps he had been embarrassed, perhaps unsure of whether to wake her, or let her sleep.

He walked over to the end of the bed, and sat himself down, as she retracted her legs a little to give him room. Then he spoke, in that low, gravely tone of his.

“Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

She stifled a yawn, and stretched.

“It’s okay. I was just… tired. I hope you didn’t mind me going through your stuff. I needed a notepad.”

“Sorry,” they both said in unison.

She smiled a little. “You go first,” Rinoa offered.

“Don’t worry about it.”

She glanced over at the desk. The poetry notepad was still there. He must have realised that she’d looked at it.

“I’m really sorry about looking in your notes. You’re not irritated are you?”

Squall didn’t smile, but there was something, behind his eyes. Amusement almost, mingling with a tiny degree of perhaps satisfaction. “Is there any reason I should be?”

She smiled, as she shuffled down to the bottom of the bed, and sat up, her legs outside both of his. She laid her right hand on his shoulder, as her left gripped gently around his stomach.

Every moment without this, she missed it.

“I had some spare time,” Squall volunteered. “Thought I’d come back for a rest. You must have really tired yourself out.”

“Yeah. I got a little… I don’t know, frustrated maybe. I’d been reading something in a book, and it wasn’t very pleasant. I came over because I had to note it down.”

“What was it?”

“Hm? Oh, the thing in the book. Just something about sorceresses in the olden days. Losing their sight, and only being able to see through magical means.”

Squall placed his left hand on hers, on his stomach, and slowly stroked it. “You probably shouldn’t worry about it.”

She sighed, and buried her head into his back. _But I do._ “But supposing that – would you –“

She didn’t need to complete the thought. Squall reached up to her right hand on his shoulder with his, and stroked her knuckles. “No way. That’s not going to happen.”

She gripped onto him, tightly. For a few moments, she gently rocked into him.

“I really liked your poem,” Rinoa eventually noted, quietly.

Squall was silent for a time, before his reply.

“Mmm. It’s not very good.”

“I didn’t think so. I really liked it. Will you tell me about it?”

“I – “ he seemed to be searching for a justification. “I – you’re.. you’re not really supposed to.”

From his rather obvious stumbling over the words, Rinoa doubted that was true. She drew herself up to behind his ear, and spoke softly. “Won’t you tell me why you wrote, Squall?”

(I can't. Because it’s embarrassing. Because you can’t always give yourself over to what you might want to say, because life is cruel, and you have to discipline yourself. Because a part of me is still scared that I might los- might…)

Squall answered, but indirectly. “Maybe… maybe I should tell you about haikus. Maybe that would help you understand.”

“Sure.” Rinoa grinned. This was something she was eager to hear. She disengaged herself from gripping Squall, and shuffled so she was sat beside him on the bed.

“Well, there’s a lot of traditions, conventions, unwritten rules, that kind of thing. It’s not just about keeping the poem compressed. You’re meant to approach it with a certain type of mind-set. You’re meant to – I don’t know the right word really. Ground yourself, let go of yourself a bit. Appreciate that there’s bigger things, that there's a rhythm to life, a 'oneness'. It’s not meant to be ‘me, me’, you’re meant to just appreciate things as they are. Be a little dispassionate, I guess, impersonal. But you're also supposed to keep... a constructive outlook. Turn a negative into a positive.”

Rinoa could see how this would be useful for someone in a leadership role. She could also see how it would be appealing to Squall.

“And you’re not meant to be abstract in what you’re saying,” he continued. “It’s meant to be directly observable things. Nature, that sort of thing.”

Rinoa considered this. “I see. So the owls and the koi, that was something you really experienced.”

He lightly placed his hand on hers, and stroked it, while looking down at it. “Something like that.”

She smiled, and eventually, his gaze rose to meet hers. Slowly, tentatively, his hand reached up to her face, and a finger experimentally traced a line from behind her ear, forwards to her cheek.

She closed her eyes, and gave a mighty sigh.

His fingers continued to wander, across her cheek, and she made a humorously critical expression, her eyes squinting towards it. Finally, she feigned a chomping bite in its direction, before grinning.

Squall retracted his hand, but his expression remained constant, except for a slight rise in his eyebrows.

And then, for the second time that day, Squall very much surprised her.

He quickly reached down to her sides, and began tickling her. She was almost immediately lost in hopeless laughter, all legs flailing and arms attempting to outfox his. Eventually, the fingers of both their hands interlocked, and he let her gently push him down to the bed, flat on his back. She shifted, to sit across his stomach, her victory complete. Squall looked up at her, with a light smile on his face.

“Honestly, I can’t imagine what’s gotten into you,” she said, in a tone of mock-chiding. “Tickles? _Poetry?_ What would Garden say if they all knew Mister Big Tough Commander was behaving like this?”

She moved her head lower, grinning, and spoke with deliberately comic authority. ”How many secrets are you going to keep from me, Squall Leonhart?”

Squall's eyes were mobile, unfocused, switching his gaze quickly from her face, to her hair. For a moment, she almost thought he was ignoring her. But then, after a time, he replied, his tone steady, his voice low, almost a whisper.

“How many in me will you unlock?”

Rinoa considered the return question, momentarily. After a few seconds the realisation came, built from all he had said, and a smile struck up, spreading freely across her face. As Squall’s face mirrored hers, she moved her head down for the kiss they both needed for completion.

**Author's Note:**

> This isn’t the place for an essay on haikus, but I would like to note that some readers with experience of haikus may think Squall’s haiku doesn’t fit the form of a traditional or ‘mature’ haiku in several respects, before we even touch on the issue of the unreliability of the 5-7-5 form in English crossing from Japanese haikus. This was fully intentional. I made Squall’s haiku deliberately not quite pass muster with me as a ‘pure’ haiku, as I wanted it to have a flavour of the beginner about it – though I still think it’s a very, very sweet one all the same, and certainly better than anything I would have come up with at Squall’s age.
> 
> Some readers may question the injection of the haiku and the haiku tradition into the FF8 game world, but it seems a reasonable enough step, given we have much else from electric guitars to hot dogs around. Though it’s obviously a separate game, FFVII offers even more direct cultural transfers from Earth, such as sushi and “Korean (!) BBQ.”
> 
> As Rinoa eventually realises in an epiphany resulting from Squall’s last question, and in case you didn’t quite work it out yourself, the haiku is a twin set of metaphors about the duality of Squall and Rinoa. (Squall night, Rinoa the owls; Squall the koi, Rinoa the sun) 
> 
> Squall’s last question is very much in the haiku spirit in turning around Rinoa’s question to a more positive form; instead of thinking of what Squall is hiding, Rinoa realises from it how much she’s helped him grow as a person – what he was expressing in the haiku - and how important she is to him, as he is to her.
> 
> The crystal eye was a reference to Matoya in the first FF game. Hey, y’know, a witch is just a derogatory name for a sorceress, right? ‘Succession of Witches’ makes that clear enough!
> 
> This story quite literally would never have been written without StrawberryLochrian, so this is dedicated to him.


End file.
